


Light and Ashes (the Cherry Fair remix)

by Quillori



Category: Original Work, The Golden Age - Woodkid (Song)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 11:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15948737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/pseuds/Quillori
Summary: The city and the countryside have more in common than you might think.





	Light and Ashes (the Cherry Fair remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zdenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Light and Ashes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1797562) by [Zdenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/pseuds/Zdenka). 



The dancers spun and turned, the earth trampled hard beneath their feet. One, two-and-three, one, two-and-three, heavy skirts swishing, belt ornaments clanking, everything keeping the rhythm. They had been dancing a long time already, long enough that the late afternoon sun had sunk to evening, the golden light going pink and red and the long shadows merging, but the music never faltered. Now one drummer would drop out and another take his place, now one shrill flute would give way to its neighbour, and the song itself passed from mouth to mouth, but the music? No, it never stopped. And, likewise, the dance, twirling and stamping in an endless, constant pattern: one dancer springing forward with great leaps, another falling back, joining the outer circle. How else to welcome spring properly, show proper gratitude and gladness for the lengthening day, the growing warmth? So it was every year, and had been time out of mind, the ancient steps and the unchanging music. So had Aithra’s grandparents danced, and theirs before them. So had she dance as a young woman, tossing her head and turning ever away while a tall man with dark eyes circled round her.

~

“Keep your head up! Gently now, do you mean to look like a rabbit? Keep your weight back, good, like that, now point your foot more.” The old man beat time with his stick; his eyes, still clear and piercing, went everywhere, spotting every error. For thirty years or more he had been the court’s Master of Dance, and while fashions had swirled and changed around him, he had remained, calm and implacable as the rhythms he sounded out, effortlessly at home with every dance, whether the stately An’strof or the lively Suro. And indeed, to him the were all the same, no more than different figures of one endless dance. This morning, as he did every morning, he was drilling the young men, ensuring even the clumsiest mastered the intricate patterns of the Crane Dance, executed each step and turn with neatness and grace.

Neatness and grace, those were the perfect words, thought Pirus, leaning on the balustrade above the practice courtyard. They perfectly described Hesperion, whether he was calling down rain in a perfectly controlled circle on each tree in the palace garden, or lighting the ritual lanterns with a single word, or singing quietly as his harp played itself and fireflies danced around him. Or, as now, turning and bowing and turning again amidst the other courtiers - all of them a little clumsy compared to him, none of them quite as light or as precise. 

Pirus loved to dance himself, to lose himself in the pattern of it - which really, when you thought about it, was almost a ritual in itself: everyone dressed with care, as you might for a sacrifice; the Great Hall, its walls and columns encrusted with changing lights, more brilliant even than the temple lanterns; the passes of the dance, as intricate as the most complex blessings, where priest after priest wove a net of good fortune, the words of enchantment passing between them, mouth to mouth, voice to voice, soul to soul. No enchanter himself, Pirus thought he saw a little of how it must be: not perhaps for Hesperion, who alone and unaided could call down fire from heaven, or summon sweet water from the earth, but for lesser enchanters, the priests and the guardians, who blended their individual wills into perfect unity.

~

The king rode north, as he did every year. The air was still crisp and cold, frost riming the streets at dawn. For Pirus, it was the very best of the year, the animal pleasures of winter - a warm bed, a hot stew, last year’s candied fruits, sweet on the tongue as honey - but also the promise of spring, of action and trials and victory. The streets around the Northern Gate were lined with plum trees, and their petals, falling, drifted down like snowflakes. What could be more beautiful than a white flower against dark hair, the delicacy of the flower against the severity of a mage’s uniform?

There had been the usual rites, and the guardians had walked to each gate of the city, stopping at the spire, and the market place, and the castle wall, their voices blending in song, their faces serene, enigmatic as the smile of the goddess to whom they were dedicated. All was as it always was. The Master of Works and the General of the East, who supported the king’s brother, plotted in corners. Those noble families who had daughters of a suitable age vied with each other for royal attention. The Master of the Marketplace, whose heart inclined more to the merchants than to the court, lost no opportunity to embarrass the Lord of the Treasury. These things were normal: the way the court worked, the way any court would work. Sometimes one faction rose in power, sometimes it was supplanted. Sometimes even one king replaced another, though not too often, for that was disruptive all round: better to advance your position in known circumstances, than risk a new and uncertain set of favourites, new and unknown prejudices and whims. Really, unless you longed for power yourself, it was no more than amusing gossip, who was in favour, who was out.

~

Soon it would sowing time again. Aithra loved the rhythm of it, had always loved it, since she was a little girl playing in the fields, too young to work for long. But even now, when the work was almost unending, she loved it still, the steadiness of it, the repeated movements, like lines of dancers across the fields, and the grains themselves, small and precious in her hands. Every year it was the same, and always had been, so long as there had been a village there at all. And now she had her own to daughter to follow her, laughing and dancing, still too young to work. A daughter, and a man to work beside her, tall, and with dark eyes. 

~

“Halt! Draw up!” Their voices amplified by magic, ringing out in a sudden, unnatural silence, each individual voice lent a richer, unearthly timber by the spells that wove around it, the lords and masters of the army ordered their men. Here were the massed cavalry, richly caparisoned and armoured with spells, the pride of a grand lord; here were serried pikemen, muscles honed as much by labour as by training, but here and now, in the moments before battle, no less in dignity or worth than the mounted citizens they fought beside. Here were the bowmen, each arrow blessed and tipped with fire, and there the small, silent mages cadre, dressed all in black, without ornament, save the mark of their rank, and the King’s badge.

One of the mages murmured a word, moved his hand quickly, precisely, and a wind sprang up from nowhere, catching the banners and lifting them high. It was like the moment before you dived, Pirus thought, when you were still balanced precariously up on the rocks, about to fall, about to sink into the cold, dark water, breath knocked out of you and kelpy weeds grasping your wrists, your legs. Or the pause before the sacrifice, when all the rites had been said, and the knife lifted to the light, but not yet bloodied. A sacred moment, outside of time, when everything held still and you were fiercely certain you were alive. And then the trumpets sounded, bright and shrill, and time came crashing back, and the battle was joined.

~

There is, in the distance, a beating of wings: a skein of birds fly towards their mating grounds. It is the way they always fly, but one is a little darker than the next, its wings strangely bright, glinting unnaturally. One of the banner-men, sharp-eyed, sees it, and thinks nothing of it. The General of the East sees it too, and nods to himself: a message, as he expected. A country labourer, taller than his fellows, his dark eyes missing nothing, thinks of his family fields, hard by where the cranes dance every year: he fights to protect his family, his farm, and more than that, to bring peace and wealth to the country, so all may prosper as his village does, so he may play his small part in the story of his country. Behind him, in the distance, the quiet chanting of the mages starts, grows stronger and stranger, its rhythms changing, fractalising, winding round each other. Elsewhere, before and beside and behind him, messengers are being sent, orders being passed, being changed, but to him, in that moment, everything is as it should be, as it always is, as reliable as the birds who return year on year, heralding the spring. 

~

The dance is always the same, although the dancers change. Now forward, now back, they turn and leap, their places varying. From a distance, the dance is endless, immutable, and yet if you follow an individual dancer, it is not so: he tires, he passes from the dance, his place is taken by another and only the pattern remains. The trees blossom every spring, the plum and the cherry, the quince and the apple, each in their proper order; every year the blossom is the same, but a wise man will not ask after the individual tree, nor yet the single flower. 

**Author's Note:**

> Ffare well, this world! I take my leve for euere,  
> I am arested to apere at goddes face.  
> O myghtyfull god, þu knowest that I had leuere  
> Than all this world, to haue oone houre space  
> To make asythe for all my grete trespace.  
> My hert, alas! is brokyne for that sorowe,  
> Som be this day that shall not be tomorrow  
> This lyfe, I see, is but a cheyre feyre;  
> All thyngis passene and so most I algate.  
>  _Anon_


End file.
